Well it was... Low lying clouds... nasty funny strange. A pibal that went almost straight up and then North... Never good.... A delay on the field and a possible static display.
After a long wait we got the news that the field was open to fly .. and qucikly those balloons that were up go off the ground.. They were the Krispy Kreme morning display... But I am ahead of myself.
Last I posted was days before Fiesta started... and it was rush rush rush to get things done.... Well.. some things never did get done..... Oh well....
TO start at the beginning..... Registration Wednesday night.... Wonderful in the new Sid Cutter pavilion... fast ... clean and no hassles except for Dick... Hearts! LOL. Nice gear and a happy face.. cant beat that. Only down to that was the loss of half my keys.... I didn't stick around.. I retraced my steps back to the truck... passing the French aerobatics team that were in to do some cool powered para-sail stuff during the week. Said he.. Asked if they had seen my keys run by.. Lots of Non non's..
Drove back to the office to see if I had dropped them there.. no joy..waste of time.... But I checked in with my contacts at registration and they said they might have found a set... So the next morning I headed down there and yep.. they had found them under a table.. I have no clue how they got there but it saved me a lot of pains.
Day "Albuquerque Aloft" was excellent. A little dicey on the inflation with a huge 90,000 balloon next to me.. Not Paul's fault..hahahaha.. and I had Kurt out to help so he became my passenger when after a good quick launch became the Pilot as that sounded like a load of fun. Dude can fly a balloon.. He had no problem holding position and flying to a gentle touchdown South of where we took off... Hah.. We headed North and then flipped around half way throwing the crew off completely.. so.. that was fun.... We landed.. Kurt landed and I decided to stick Mo in and do a little hop with him at the controls... He did and we did this awesome spiral loop at about 6300 and came down to a gentle landing. Packed up and put away and ready... Off to propane ( long wait ) ( another story ) and home and get ready for day 1.
Day 1 was a bit of okay but the winds were minimal and in the wrong direction. North to the Pueblo... We would rather not land there as its a hassle for them. We had a great inflation and off we went and ended up heading right down the East side of the field going North... No luck and had to land right on the corner of the Pueblo... Officers got us in and out quickly.
Day 2 was a hold day... the winds were no existent or going towards the Pueblo again. We were on a hold... held.. then got released to fly... We thought it was going to be a static at best and a down day at worst. Great.... We started cold inflation and had it slowly going up but the crew had it all handled just fine.... even with a looped crown positioning line that had to be fixed... a very fast re-cold pack and a faster hot inflation they were cool calm, professional.. Then when asked to become lock downs while I stayed buoyant they did that too. With the impressive guidance of a Zebra the crew slid me forward so swiftly to follow the Zebra to launch location that the envelope lagged behind.. which was quite funny to see on the rear video camera... liked sliding over ice... green ice. The Zebra had us set, up and off within ten minutes of hot inflation.. I like that.
We followed the rules and ascended at 200 fpm all the way but that took about 30 minutes to get to the North end of the field. Wow.. My crew beat me to the end. LOL... All the balloons around it was very hard to keep an eye out and stay safely away from other balloons. Looking down there was a nice slow South and we went down for it.... guess what.. It went away.... So we ended up landed about 500 yards from where we landed yesterday.... Again.. Great help from the Pueblo Officers a had started to sprinkle when we went hot and when we were driving back to the field after propaining it started raining hard.... then stopped.. weird! Good that we didn't get a wet envelope.
Now we are resting before going out again for the glow tonight. All the video cameras and photographs have been downloaded for the last three days.. wow... a lot.. Not great because of the crummy light but nice. Fantastic capture by Andy of the chase this morning. We are both going to get our heads together and see what we can do to make some cool stuff up.
A few select shots....
Registration parking.
Banner installed and ready to go.
Awaiting in propane line and watching the acrobatics.
Off the South East end of the field... Heading North on day 1.
Day 2 onlooking fun before launching.
Day 2 hay diddle diddle straight up the middle... missing all the the balloons along the way.
South View... Misty mountain breakdown baby!
Loads of pictures and video.. Videos from the long arm are my favs right now.... But the 360 cam is second.. so much footage and no time right now to do anything with it.
Not going to load up the fb banners and logos from this last bit as there isn't time.. maybe next week when I have much more to tell you about.. so much that I have glossed over.... woah!
